Ukrainian forces staged an overnight ambush on a Russian convoy 40km inside the international border in Russia’s Kursk region, as the Kremlin declared a federal emergency and said it was transferring extra forces to try to snuff out a four-day incursion that has badly damaged its credibility.
A video circulated by Russian military bloggers showed a destroyed convoy, with bodies just visible inside some trucks, on the E38 east-west highway at Oktyabrskoe, a location far deeper inside Russia than any previously confirmed fighting since Ukraine’s forces crossed the border on Tuesday.
Commentators said the attack, reminiscent of Ukrainian attacks on Russian troops besieging Kyiv in the first weeks of the war, demonstrated an effective hit-and-run strategy, but the incursion appeared likely to draw an escalating response from the Kremlin, and its overall outcome remains profoundly uncertain.
Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
The Russian Ministry of Defense at lunchtime on Friday said it was transferring military reserves to the Kursk region, including Grad rockets, artillery and tanks. A video released by the Russian armed forces news channel Zvezda showed a convoy of trucks carrying armored vehicles down a highway.
Kursk Oblast acting governor Alexei Smirnov said Moscow had declared a state of federal emergency in the morning and he urged residents to “stay calm and keep up your fighting spirit, support each other, do not give in to panic and despondency.” So far 3,000 Russian civilians have been evacuated away from the fighting.
Ukraine was able to burst through a lightly defended Kursk border on Tuesday morning with several hundred troops. Ukraine’s forces have engaged in fast-moving maneuver warfare, a type of combat that has rarely been seen during the war in Ukraine, which has been largely dominated by fortified trenches and heavy mining, preventing breakthroughs.
The fast-moving fighting and limited sources of information mean it is hard to be sure where the frontlines are in the sector.
A video posted on Ukrainian media outlets on Friday showed Ukrainian soldiers at a gas measuring facility in the town of Sudzha, 10km from the border, which they said they controlled. It was not immediately possible to verify the video, but the claims were echoed by Russia’s semi-independent military bloggers, the principal source of information about the incursion.
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